I currently find myself making my way through the copious amount of books on theatre that sit beside my bed. Beginning with Peter Szondi’s Theory of the Modern Drama, translated by Michael Hays – which is a book pivotal to the understanding of how theatre and Drama (and yes, capital ‘D’) has changed since the days of the Renaissance.

The development of a self-conscious being, after the medieval world slowly faded away, led to the need of a different kind of figure presented on the stage – a figure who mirrored interpersonal relationships. The Renaissance saw the movement away from the classical unities of action, time and place, which Aristotle and the Greeks came to love – and the removal of the likes of the chorus, the prologue and epilogue, led to dramatists using dialogue as a ‘sole constitutive element in the dramatic web’.

I didn’t want to make this a long blog talking about modern theatre (blah, blah, blah), but to share a really interesting quote of Peter Szondi about the theatregoer (although maybe I should credit the translator for capturing Szondi’s thoughts really well!). I think he really begins to capture how the spectator has a role to watch, learn, and think about what is being performed in front of us – and I definitely see the resonances with Brecht here! But I think above all, it shows the importance of voicing ideas about the world and hitting the audience with a strong punch of what really is going on around us.

‘The theatregoer is an observer – silent, with hands tied, lamed by the impact of this world’

Peter Szondi